Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Chronological Culture Change And Organization In The Middle Ohio Valley

圣路易斯华盛顿大学博士生爱德华·亨利将研究北美东部的古代几何陶器纪念碑。本研究将探讨仪式行为背景下的集体劳动努力、集体劳动在社会融合中的作用以及集体劳动对意识形态参与的反映。虽然这项研究关注的是过去，但也有可能提供关于现在的信息。仪式和以社区为中心的劳动在今天仍然是建立和维持社会秩序的因素。学者们指出，参与性参与仪式劳动活动有助于建立和巩固社会纽带，复制意识形态，并加强社会政治和经济议程。使用考古学来评估古代小规模社会建造礼仪用土纪念碑的情况，为探索社会复杂性的物质指标、它是如何产生的以及它是如何组织的提供了一个背景。北美东部的阿迪纳和霍普韦尔(公元前500年-公元前600年)社会对土质纪念碑的建造方式和速度有了更好的技术和年代学上的理解。这些组织似乎是流动的，没有国家式的领导层级。然而，这些人组织起来，建造几何复杂的围栏遗址，大型墓穴，并维持一个大陆交换异国商品的网络。考察这些仪式性的景观修改做法是如何以多快的速度在俄亥俄河谷蔓延开来的，可以让我们对新兴的社会复杂性有一种理解，在这种社会复杂性中，大量的劳动壮举是在植根于僵化等级制度的社会政治结构之外进行的。亨利将研究如何在俄亥俄山谷中部肯塔基州中部的蓝草地区建造沟渠和堤坝几何围挡。这一地区被认为是古代北美东部阿迪纳和霍普韦尔社会的中心地带。考察肯塔基州的这些仪式遗址，可以看到俄亥俄河以南的景色，那里对围栏建设的年代性理解需要完善。更好地了解围栏的建造、使用和废弃的历史将有助于表明与阿迪纳和霍普韦尔的出现相关的社会变化(例如，狩猎和园艺经济、陶瓷技术、新的动物肖像学)传播的速度有多快。此外，这项工作将展示如何在整个区域采用特定的仪式习俗。通过在肯塔基州中部挖掘八个土制围栏的多个区域，亨利将看到在每个遗址建设期间景观是如何改变的，并确定是否存在仪式劳动传统的差异。他将检查带有沟渠的路堤和沟渠的施工剖面，并在围栏内打开大型(约4x4米)挖掘块，以探索在其边界内进行的活动。这个强大的数据集将被用来研究古代北美东部社会复杂性的组织和传播。这项研究的历史部分将与现代美国印第安人的背景相关。这项研究将为攻读人类学和考古学学位的学生提供专门的考古学培训。

Edward Henry, PhD Candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, will investigate ancient geometric earthen monuments in Eastern North America. This research will explore collective labor efforts within contexts of ritual action, their role in social integration, and their reflection of ideological participation. While the research focuses on the past it also has the potential to inform on the present. Ritual and community focused labor are factors which today still serve to establish and maintain social order. Scholars have noted that participatory engagement in ritualistic labor events can help create and solidify social bonds, reproduce ideologies, and reinforce sociopolitical and economic agendas. Using archaeology to assess the construction of ceremonial earthen monuments by ancient small-scale societies provides a context to explore the material indicators for social complexity, how it emerges, and is organized. A better technological and chronological understanding of how, and how quickly, earthen monuments are built by Adena and Hopewell (500 BCE-600 CE) societies of Eastern North America. These groups are seemingly mobile and do not have a state-like leadership hierarchy. Nevertheless, these people organized to build geometrically complex enclosure sites, large burial mounds, and maintain a continental exchange network in exotic goods. Examining how, how quickly, these practices of ritual landscape modification spread across the Ohio River Valley provides one understanding of emergent social complexity where massive labor feats were conducted outside a sociopolitical structure grounded in a rigid hierarchy.Mr. Henry will examine how ditch-and-embankment geometric enclosures were built across the Bluegrass Region of Central Kentucky in the Middle Ohio Valley. This region is considered the heartland of Adena and Hopewell societies in ancient Eastern North America. Examining these ritual sites in Kentucky provides a view south of the Ohio River, where chronological understandings of enclosure construction needs refinement. A better historical understanding of enclosure construction, use, and abandonment will help indicate how quickly social changes associated with the emergence of Adena and Hopewell (e.g., a hunting and horticultural economy, ceramic technology, new animalistic iconography) spread. In addition, this work will show how particular ritual practices were adopted across the region. By excavating multiple areas of eight earthen enclosures across Central Kentucky, Henry will see how the landscape was modified during each sites construction and determine if differences exist in traditions of ritual labor. He will examine the construction profiles of embankments and ditches with trenches and open large (ca. 4 x 4 meter) excavation blocks inside enclosures to explore the activities carried out within their boundaries. This robust dataset will be used to examine the organization and spread of social complexity in ancient Eastern North America. The historical component of this research will be relevant to the background of modern American Indians. This research will provide specialized archaeological training to students pursuing degrees in anthropology and archaeology.